The following article is from Eastman’s Online
Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. It is
re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the
newsletter is available at http://www.RootsForum.com.

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Plus Edition

A Weekly Summary of Events and
Topics of Interest to Online GenealogistsVol. 8 No. 23 - June 9, 2003

Pennsylvania Genealogy Books on CD-ROM

Retrospect Publishing has released a number of electronic reprints of
Pennsylvania genealogical and historical books. Each CD-ROM contains high
quality images of the original pages, along with a full- text search capability.
This week I had a chance to use one of the books on CD: Butler County, The
People and Towns, 1796-1883. I found it to be a very impressive work.

To be sure, this is an electronic republication of a book that has been
available for 120 years. The book is an every-word-searchable electronic version
of a book published in 1883 by Waterman, Watkins & Co. of Chicago. This book
is typical of the many county history books written in the late 1800s: it gives
a lot of information about the history of the county, followed by short
biographies of the more prominent citizens. If not prominent, they were at least
the people who could afford to purchase a copy of the book in advance of its
publication. Each person listed is described in glowing terms, usually as
"of fine moral character." Apparently those of lesser moral
characteristics were not mentioned at all.

Perhaps a republication of an old book would normally not be considered
"impressive." However, this is no ordinary electronic reprint. What
makes this work impressive is the search tool added to the electronic version.

In contrast to publishers of many other CD-ROM reprints that I have described
in the past, Retrospect Publishing has developed their own "reader"
software. It is optimized for old books, unlike the generic software products,
such as Adobe Acrobat reader, which other products use. Retrospect Publishing's
reader software is called Retrospector.

The Retrospector software for Windows is included on the CD-ROM, along with
the book images and transcription. Installation of Retrospector was typical of
any modern Windows program: insert the CD, follow the on-screen instructions,
and then re-boot the system. I was soon looking at the cover page of a
120-year-old book.

It would be easy to say that I searched for a few surnames and found them and
then printed out a few pages. I have written this in many past reviews about
books on CD and, indeed, I did this also with the Butler County, The People
and Towns CD-ROM disk. However, I soon found that I could do a lot more. In
reality, I did more with this disk than I have with any other CD-ROM disk that I
remember, and I am sure I still did not discover everything it can do. In fact,
perhaps the worst thing I can say about this series of disks is that it takes
quite a while to learn all the features available. To be sure, I was doing
simple searches within seconds after installing the software, and those simple
searches worked well. It was the more advanced tools that took a while to learn,
tools that are not available on other CD-ROM disks.

The pages displayed on the screen are always images from the original book.
However, transcribed data apparently exists on the same CD, a conclusion I drew
as I found I could search for any word or combination of words. This is just not
possible on disks that only contain page images.

As usual, I started off with a simple search for my own surname, and several
occurrences were found. I could click on any occurrence of the name in the
search results box, and within a second or two, an image of the original page
containing that reference would appear on the screen. Best of all, a green
"highlighter" on the edge of the screen would show the paragraph in
which the name could be found. No more looking all over the page trying to find
a reference!

The images of the original pages were crystal clear, better than most other
CD-ROM disks containing images of old books. Readability was always excellent;
every word was crisp and distinct.

I found mentions of men and women with my last name in various political
offices. One was listed as a member of the county bar association; others were
listed as farmers, and one was listed in an obituary – all the sorts of
information I would have expected in a county history book. I found that I could
quickly move from one occurrence of the name to the next by clicking on the
PREVIOUS and NEXT icons.

Then things became fun. I spent some time in the Help File and discovered the
Moderate Search and Advanced Search Modes.

The Moderate Search supports basic AND / OR Search Criteria. It can search:

Books Searched: Either all or one of the books may be searched.

Word Order: You may require the words to be book in the same order they
are used in the criteria.

Word Locations: The words must all be located together (within about two
words)

Word Count: Up to three sets of words / numbers (called OR sets) may be
used as criteria.

Test: A word from each OR set must all be found (logical AND or OR sets).

Set Size: The OR sets each may contain up to three words.

Soundex: Search for words independent of spelling variations. Enabled for
CD-ROMs where it is most useful, such as the Pennsylvania Published
Archives. (Always available as Advanced Mode Soundex Search).

The Advanced Mode allows the user to search:

Books Searched: Either all or one of the books may be searched.

Word Order: You may require the words to be book in the same order they
are used in the criteria.

Word Locations: The words must all be located together (you may specify
the proximity, up to 999 words apart)

Word Count: Up to five sets of words / numbers may be used as criteria.

Set Size: The sets of words each may contain an unlimited number of words.

Test: A word in all OR sets must all be found (logical AND or OR sets)
except that,

Exclusions: You may require a word / OR set to be excluded in the results
(logical NOT).

While the searches are powerful, other capabilities are also available that I
am not used to seeing on other disks. One that is difficult to describe but easy
to use is the ability to zoom in on the text. Remember that you are looking at
on-screen images of original books. With the mouse, you can highlight a word, a
few words, or even a few paragraphs, and then zoom in instantly to see magnified
images of the highlighted area.

Another feature that I found useful is that this CD-ROM uses the same page
numbers as the original document. In other, simpler book-viewing software, the
CD-ROM software assumes that the first page is number 1, the second is number 2,
and so on. However, most books have the first few pages listed in lower case
Roman numerals. The first page might be page i, the second one is page ii, the
third is page iii, etc. If there were six pages before the printed page one,
telling the software to go to page 85 might actually display page 79 of the
printed book. Not so with Retrospect Publishing's Retrospector software; telling
the software to go to page 85 ends up with the real page 85 displayed. The first
few pages use the same Roman numeral page numbers as the original printed book.

I also found it easy to set "bookmarks" in the CD-ROM pages. I
could electronically "mark" a page and then return to the same page at
any time in the future.

Printing individual pages was effortless; simply click on the Print icon, and
a near-perfect image of that page appears on your printer a short time later.
The printouts are self-documenting: the book's title, the section subtitle, and
the page number appear along the bottom of the printed page, along with
Retrospect Publishing's copyright and a reference to the company's Web page.

Because these are images displayed on the screen, it is impossible to
copy-and-paste text from the book into other Windows programs. Apparently there
is no capability to copy-and-paste the images, either. The only method I can
find of copying data to another Windows program is to manually re-type it.

Retrospect Publishing also has an interesting "Word Check" on the
company's Web site. You can check all the CD-ROMs for the presence of a word by
entering it on the Web site: type a single word in the box, and then click the
button. If available on any CD-ROM, the word will be displayed on the company's
Web site. For instance, entering my own name into the search box quickly
displayed a list of all the Retrospect Publishing CD-ROM disks in which that
name occurs. This is a great way of checking in advance for names before
spending money. To be sure, the Web search is very simple when compared to the
search software on the CD-ROM disks, but it serves its purpose.

Retrospector software runs on most any Windows PC built in the past five or
six years. It requires Windows 95 or later operating system, a 486 or faster
processor, 16 megabytes of RAM memory, 4 megabytes of hard drive space, and a
VGA display capable of 256 colors or more. There is no Macintosh version of the
Retrospector software.

Butler County, The People and Towns sells for $39.95 plus tax and
shipping. Retrospect Publishing has many other Pennsylvania books available at
prices ranging from $19.95 through $98.95. A complete list can be found on their
Web site at: http://www.retrospectpublishing.com.
You can order these CD-ROM disks from a safe and secure shopping cart order system on the same Web site.

I was impressed with Retrospector software and the one CD-ROM data disk from
Retrospect Publishing that I had a chance to use. It worked well, searches were
almost instantaneous, and the search software has more options than I have seen
in most other "old books on CD-ROM" disks. The information was first
class as well. For more information, look at: http://www.retrospectpublishing.com

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